The Islamic account was set up by the high street bank to attract Muslim customers by allowing them to keep faithful to their religion. Sharia law does not permit the payment of interest so the 'typical' Islamic account at Lloyds TSB has been set up without an overdraft facility. If a Muslim customer who has insufficient funds in the account tries to make a payment, it is blocked and a 'return item fee' is charged.

However, on some Islamic accounts such a payment is authorised and an 'unplanned overdraft fee' of £15 is then levied. The bank says this is a management fee, not a payment of interest, so does not contradict Sharia law. Meanwhile, customers with standard current accounts who go into the red by at least £100 without authorisation are hit with an 'unplanned overdraft fee' of £20 a day for a maximum of ten days. This could mean a customer has to pay £200 in one month.

The Islamic account is available to all customers at Lloyds TSB. In theory, anyone who does not need a permanent overdraft facility could switch to this account to avoid being hit by interest charges for going into the red.

THE NEW FIGURE REFLECTS A WORSE ECONOMIC PICTURE THAN EXPECTED EARLIER THIS YEAR. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because new budget projections will not be announced until next week. Ten-year forecasts are volatile figures subject to change over time. But the higher number will likely create political difficulties for President Barack Obama in Congress and could create anxiety with foreign buyers of US debt.

There are times when I wish I could see the 'green shoots' that Ben Bernanke says are sprouting up or agree that the Obama Administration has "rescued the economy from the worst recession ever." But I have to tell you how I see the world. I'm not an economist or banker and I could be wrong, BUT I DON'T SEE 'GREEN SHOOTS' OR LONG-TERM STABILITY FOR AMERICA RIGHT NOW.

On September 18, 2007 when the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at 13,403 and unemployment was at 4.6% and the 'experts' were telling you good times were ahead I had to tell you that, "WE ARE ABSOLUTELY HEADING IN FOR A RECESSION. IT IS UNSTOPPABLE..." I wish I could tell you I see better times ahead but I don't. Our politicians continue to give us a weak antibiotic when major surgery is required. The antibiotic will temporarily mask our symptoms but will not address our underlying pathology and condition.

In the end the meager dose of medicine we receive will actually make us worse by making our system immune and luring us into a false sense of security when we need to have all our senses heightened to the dangers and threats lurking around us. WE LIVE IN PERILOUS TIMES AND WE OURSELVES ARE IN A PERILOUS CONDITION. We will have a period of stability where it looks like things are going well and it looks like we'll have turned the corner on our problems.

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He made the claims in a television interview for Libyan television recorded as he accompanied Megrahi on the flight back from Scotland to Libya on Thursday. The claims were vehemently denied. A Foreign Office spokesman said: "There is no deal. All decisions relating to Megrahi's case have been exclusively for Scottish ministers, the Crown Office in Scotland and the Scottish judicial authorities."

"No deal has been made between the UK Government and Libya in relation to Megrahi and any commercial interests in the country." Earlier David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, rejected any suggestion that ministers wanted Megrahi to be freed for commercial reasons, dismissing it as a "slur". The claims came as MEGRAHI TOLD A NEWSPAPER HE WOULD PRODUCE EVIDENCE PROVING HIS INNOCENCE BEFORE HE DIES.

The first artificial lifeform is likely to be a simple man-made bacterium that proves that the technology can work. But it will be followed by more complex bacteria that turn coal into cleaner natural gas, or algae that can soak up carbon dioxide and convert it into fuels. They could also be used to create new vaccines and antibiotics. The prediction came after a breakthrough by the J Craig Venter Institute in Maryland. In January, the team created the entire genetic code of a new bacterium. They now hope to transfer such artificial DNA into a host cell to create a new species, the journal Science reported.

Yesterday Dr Venter said: 'Assuming we don't make any errors, I think it should work and we should have the first synthetic species by the end of the year.' The team successfully transplanted the genome of one bacteria into another for the first time in 2007. They then created the first entirely man-made genome. But previous attempts to introduce the synthetic genome into another organism and take control of the new bacteria all failed.

Last month, Exxon Mobil Corp signed a $600million (£362million) deal with Dr Venter's privately held Synthetic Genomics Inc to work on making biofuel from algae. Venter has said he hopes to manipulate organisms to produce biofuels, clean up toxic waste and sequester carbon to slow global warming. Researchers already regularly engineer life forms by adding or deleting genes.

The $6.7 trillion US commercial real estate market has been a standout for such tactics and in part explains why, despite the rapid deterioration in property prices and cash flow, delinquencies and defaults so far have been relatively low.

In the smaller but once-powerful leveraged loan market, such tactics have also allowed some companies, many of whom tapped this market to finance some of the biggest leveraged buyouts this decade, to avoid default this year. That's a good thing because rapid-fire defaults could have kept credit markets clogged for longer and the financial system on precarious footing.

BUT SUCH TACTICS JUST POSTPONE THE DAY OF RECKONING. They don't avoid it.

"WE ARE WITNESSING A SLOW, STEADY TAKEOVER OF OUR TRUE FREEDOMS. We are becoming a socialist nation, and whoever can't see this is probably hoping it isn't true. If we permit Mr. Obama to take over all our industries, if we permit him to raise our taxes to support unconstitutional causes, then we will be in default. THIS GREAT AMERICA WILL BECOME A PARALYZED NATION."

"Do not let the Obama administration fool you with all their cunning Alinsky methods. And if you don't know what that method is, I implore you to get the book 'Rules for Radicals,' by Saul Alinsky. Mr Obama is very well trained in these methods," he continues, citing a television campaign critical of the Republican Party and contentious town-hall meetings about health care reform.

"The real truth is that the Obama administration is professional at bullying, as we have witnessed with ACORN at work during the presidential campaign. It seems to me they are sending down their bullies to create fist fights among average American citizens who don't want a government-run health care plan forced upon them," Mr Voight says. "SO I ASK AGAIN. IS PRESIDENT OBAMA CREATING A CIVIL WAR IN OUR OWN COUNTRY?"

In an interview with the BBC's Stephen Sackur on the "Hardtalk" program, Leipold initially attempted to evade the question BUT WAS ULTIMATELY FORCED TO ADMIT THAT GREENPEACE HAD MADE A "MISTAKE" when it said Arctic ice would disappear completely in 20 years. The claim stems from a July 15 Greenpeace press release entitled "Urgent Action Needed As Arctic Ice Melts," in which it is stated that global warming will lead to an ice-free Arctic by 2030.

Sackur accused Leipold and Greenpeace of releasing "MISLEADING INFORMATION" BASED ON "EXAGGERATION AND ALARMISM," pointing out that it was "preposterous" to claim that the Greenland ice sheet, a mass of 1.6 million square kilometers with a thickness of 3 km in the middle that has survived much warmer periods in history, would completely melt when it had stood firm for hundreds of thousands of years. "There is no way that ice sheet is going to disappear," said Sackur.

"I don't think it will be melting by 2030. ...That may have been a mistake," Leipold was eventually forced to admit. Similar claims that the north pole will be "ice free" crop up almost every summer yet are routinely disproved. Indeed, it was discovered that during August 2007 to August 2008, ARCTIC ICE HAD IN FACT GROWN BY AROUND 30 PER CENT, AN AREA EQUIVALENT TO THE SIZE OF GERMANY.

Samuel Poghisio, Kenya's minister of Communication and Information, and a member of the Pokot community, will present the biblical translation Saturday in Nairobi, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano reports. The project to translate the Bible in its entirety to Pökoot, which is spoken by some 334,000 people in Kenya and Uganda, took 30 years.

L'Osservatore Romano noted differences in opinion over presentation and footnotes as the main stumbling block. According to the Bible Society of Kenya, there are 53 major language groups in the country. The entire Bible has been translated into only 17 of the 53 languages. THE BIBLE SOCIETY NOTES ON ITS WEBSITE THAT A TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE TAKES BETWEEN 15-17 YEARS, AND COSTS APPROXIMATELY $2 A VERSE.

The US inked civil nuclear power deals with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates last year. Israel had no official response to the Saudi minister's announcement.

Over the last two years, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, the UAE, Yemen, Morocco, Libya, Jordan and Egypt have all indicated an interest in developing nuclear programs, with Israeli officials saying, off the record, that if these countries did not want the programs now for their military capabilities, they wanted the technology in place to keep "other options open" if Iran were to develop a bomb.

Israel has been careful not to take a public stand on civilian nuclear programs in neighboring states, partly because as one of the few countries in the world that has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, it is not keen on lobbying against nuclear know-how for peaceful needs going to countries that are willing to sign the treaty, since that would focus the limelight on Israel's own unique situation.

The worst affected areas are in the country's semi-arid south-east regions as well as some parts of central Kenya. The World Food Programme (WFP) has described the crisis as a "very difficult situation" and appealed to donor countries to offer funds.

Currently some 2.5 million people are receiving emergency food aid in the country but the effect of the drought has meant that a further 1.3 million now also need help. "People are saying it is the worst drought since 2000," said WFP spokeswoman Gabrielle Menezes. The regions affected normally harvest their crops once a year, planting them in April and collecting in September after the rains. But this year those rains have failed to come.

The Kenyan government was supposed to have built up a sizeable stock of maize but, following allegations of a corruption scandal, it only has enough to last another six weeks, says the BBC's East Africa correspondent, Will Ross. Many subsistence farmers are reported to be abandoning rural areas - where they rely on aid - and moving into already over-congested slums in the towns and cities.

The Scottish government released Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, who is 57 and has terminal cancer, on compassionate grounds. US President Barack Obama said the move was "a mistake", and some relatives of US victims reacted angrily. Most of the 270 people who died in the bombing were Americans. In a radio interview, Mr Obama said: "We have been in contact with the Scottish government, indicating that we objected to this. We thought it was a mistake."

In a statement released after his departure from HMP Greenock, Megrahi continued to protest his innocence. He said: "The remaining days of my life are being lived under the shadow of the wrongness of my conviction. I have been faced with an appalling choice: to risk dying in prison in the hope that my name is cleared posthumously or to return home still carrying the weight of the guilty verdict, which will never now be lifted. The choice which I made is a matter of sorrow, disappointment and anger, which I fear I will never overcome."

Cameron said: "You can get to a level of government debt where, not that it becomes certain that people will cease to lend you the money, but you start running risks of them demanding higher premia, higher interest rates. OR YOU RUN THE RISK OF NOT BEING ABLE TO MEET YOUR OBLIGATIONS." Cameron was careful to qualify his remarks after Labour accused him earlier this year of talking down Britain when he warned that Brown could be the second Labour prime minister forced to apply to the IMF for a loan.

"I have never predicted that is going to happen," he said of his warning that Britain could default. "But as government borrowing goes up and up and up, you start running that risk. You should not be running that risk... I'm not saying it's going to happen, but THE GOVERNMENT, WITH THE LEVELS OF INDEBTEDNESS THEY HAVE, THEY ARE RUNNING THOSE RISKS."

"The most difficult phase for financing is going to be in the first and second quarter of 2010," said Hartmut Schauerte, the economic state secretary. "We are working as a government to create instruments that can offset a feared credit crunch or any credit squeeze in sectors of the economy," he said. Mr Schauerte said firms with weak balance sheets may struggle to roll over loans as they come due in coming months. Negotiations with banks could prove "very difficult".

State support is likely to be concentrated on boosting the capital base of German firms and providing credit insurance for exporters, perhaps to the tune of €250bn to €300bn (£256bn). "If this service fails, we are going to see dozens of credit collapses," he said. Axel Weber, Bundesbank chief and a key figure at the European Central Bank, said over the weekend that THE ECONOMY REMAINED FRAGILE AND FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS IN THE CREDIT SYSTEM HAD NOT BEEN RESOLVED.

"I must warn that it is too early to talk about the end of the financial crisis. Unemployment is going to rise as 'Kurzarbeit' expires, and that could hurt consumption," he said, referring to the state scheme that subsidises firms to keep idle workers on their books.

The Irish Times reports that Vote No to Lisbon, formerly the Campaign Against the EU Constitution, yesterday opened its campaign in Dublin in the run up to the second referendum on 2 October. Speaking at the press conference Socialist Party MEP Joe Higgins urged Irish voters to reject the Lisbon Treaty based on its content, rather than a desire to "kick the Government out of office", the Irish Independent reports. Higgins said that it was false "through and through" to portray the Lisbon Treaty as a solution to the economic crisis: "Lisbon is a treaty for decades, not for one or two years and therefore it shapes the Europe we will have to live in."

People Before Profit Alliance Councillor Brid Smith said the 'guarantees' obtained by the Irish government did not change the Lisbon Treaty by "one iota". She said, "WE BELIEVE THAT IRISH VOTERS ARE BEING THREATENED, CAJOLED AND LIED TO."

Writing in the Irish Independent, Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Micheal Martin responds to an article by Bruce Arnold, which argued that the government's recent White Paper on the Lisbon Treaty "IS A FLAWED DOCUMENT, CONTAINING SOME SERIOUS DISTORTION OF FACT. It is unbalanced and heavily politicised, presenting a case that favours the defeated minority in the referendum of last year."